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Our 2016 Christmas Lesson #1. is Choux de Noel, a Japanese style cookie cream puff in wreath shape filled with earl grey tea creme patissiere (custard cream) and pistachio chantilly. We will decorate it with some strawberries and blueberries.

The key for this class is to make cream puff grow nicely, and you will be learning some tips to make it successful. Hope everyone’s choux becomes nice shape^^!

The crunchy cookie on top has a hint of cinnamon so that the combination of tea x cinnamon spice will remind you of hot chai and Christmas spice cookies and cakes.

Another recipe for this class is Tea snowball cookie. It’s an earl grey flavored cookies coated with icing sugar, and if you like you can also add some cinnamon spice to its decoration.

Let’s enjoy the last month of year 2016 with some nice cookies and cakes!

Here is the schedule for this class;

DATE: December 3rd (Sat.) 11:00am-2:30pm – FULL

December 18th (Sun.) 11:00am-2:30pm

FEE: RM200 (RM159 for members)

Thanks for your support and I will be looking forward to hearing from you!!!

Last weekend I invited my friends to my house for the Afternoon Tea Party~!

I didn’t spend much time preparing for these items, but because I had parts and pieces of the stuffs from my class, the table became full with sweets!

Here are the menu we had;

*Scones (Chocolate & Earl Grey Tea)

*Strawberry & Pistachio Tart

*Fruits Cake

*Green Tea Rollcake

*Japanese Cream Puff

*Raisin Sandwich Cookie

My favorite Strawberry Tart!

I make this tart every year during Strawberry season. I change creme d’amande (almond cream) and custard cream creme patissiere (custard cream) depending on the time and this one was pistachio creme d’amande, which I just taught in last week class.

Green Tea Rollcake is also my favorite strawberry cake! Not only eating, I also like to make this cake as it’s quite simple and quick. I sometimes make plain rollcake and sometimes green tea flavor cake, which the base is the same. Btw, I will be having this class tomorrow and also in April!

Scone is a ‘must’ item in Afternoon tea, too ~^^. I used my ‘Rich scone’ recipe, which I taught together with Kyoto Green Tea Chiffon Cake last year (I also have this class in April), and put in milk chocolate chip and earl grey tea. Earl grey tea is my favorite scone. I also like to sometimes put raisins and cranberries.

I am now testing Cookie Choux recipe, which is a Japanese style of cream puff with cookie on top. I taught mini puff many times in the past, but want to make a normal size with more crunchy cookie on top!

Today I’d like to introduce you some tipsmake an iced tea! Iced tea is quite easy to make but you cannot simply make by putting ice into the tea.

First of all, you need to know that there are tea leaves suited for the iced tea. In other words, there are tea leaves that are not suited for the iced tea. When you cool down iced tea, sometimes you notice that the tea becomes white and creamy in color and not transparent (it’s called cream-down or milk-down). This is caused by the tannin and caffeine contained in the tea leaves. So if tea leaves contains a lot of these two items such as Darjeeling tea and Assam tea, it is not suited for the iced tea. The tea leaves that contains less of tannin and caffeine are Sri Lankan tea, Earl grey tea, and some flavored teas.

However, these teas also contain some amount of tannin and caffeine, so as the time goes by it will slowly start becoming creamy in color. So, try to reduce the tea extraction time so that you can refrain tannin and caffeine from coming out and do not keep it in the fridge and drink within the same day!

This is one of my favorite flavored teas that I got from my student – Strawberry Flavored Tea from FORTNUM & MASON. It tastes nice especially cold, and whenever I serve this tea in the class, students asked me where this is from. FORTNUM & MASON is a popular brand worldwide, but unfortunately I haven’t seen it in Malaysia… (The closest you can get is in Takashimaya, Singapore?)

But you can get many kind of nice tea leaves in Malaysia these days (like TWG and Harrods), so enjoy your tea time keeping those “tips” in mind^^!

I had darjeeling tea (second flush) with home-made madeleine for today’s tea time.

Speaking a little bit about tea, Darjeeling tea is known to be one of the three best teas in the world – together with Keemun from China and Uva from Sri Lanka. Darjeeling is grown in the Northern east part of India (West Bengal) and there are more than 8o over tea farms in this district. There are three picking seasons for darjeeling tea and those are first flush in spring, second flush in summer and autumnal in autumn. The second flush I had today is known to have its unique muscatel flavor. Because of its nice color and fragrance, darjeeling tea is called “The champagne of Tea”.

Just like coffee, the grade of tea leaves is described more and more in details these days and you can often see which farm it came from in the package. The one I had today was from Risheehat,one of the most popular darjeeling farms among Japanese tea buyers.

By the way, I recently bought these tea cups and really like the color and the design. It’s made in Turkey. Matching the cups and plates together with the cakes is another joy during tea time. I enjoyed the darjeeling aroma and had a relaxing time today!

I found these pictures I took in Mariage Freres @ Ginzaback in 2009. I went there with my mother to have lunch and tea^^.

They have 500 over kinds of tea selection (!) from all over the world, and after checking their thick tea menu book we ordered Darjeeling tea (second flush)and Sri Lankan tea Uva.The photo is Uva tea which had very vivid beautiful orange color.

And these were the lunch menu we ordered:

Appetizer: Duck terrine

Main dish 1 : Guinea fowl stuffed with vegetables

Main dish 2: Prawn mille feuille

You can see that they use tea leaves in the sauce.

Dessertsin a showcase.

Here is the photo of the cake we took in our next visit during X’mas season. They had a lot of modern type of Buche de Noeland we ordered Marron bucheand Pistachio buche mousse cake.

It was delicious!

Since my daughter Hanae was born, I am not able to go to these tea houses… but hope to visit there someday again. My dream is to have tea with Hanae in the far future^^!

We will make 5 types of pastries and a sandwich that are popular for the Afternoon Tea Sets. First comes scone, then N.Y. style cheesecake, then Japanese rollcake and cookie. I also added nutty brownies as a fifth menu because normally there will be something with chocolate!

Here are each of the details (you get to bring back 4 packs of each item):

1. Scone Raisin ~ Mariage Freres Style~(4 pcs)

If you like tea, you must know this tea company called Mariage Freresin Paris! They are the pioneer of tea company and carries hundreds of teas including original teas and blend teas. They have tea salon in Paris and in Ginza, Tokyo Japan.

I’ve visited salon in Japan a couple of times and shops in Paris. The food you can taste there is unique and each dish has a hint of some kind of teas, even the meat.

The scone recipe is from their salon menu!

2. N.Y. Style Cheesecake ~with blueberry sauce~ (11cm x 1pc)

This N.Y. style cheesecake uses 3 types of cheese. N.Y. style cheesecake is normally very easy to make (just mixing all the ingredients), so I added some unique flavor/cheese to it! We will also make the topping creme fromage and the bottom crust!

3. Whole Wheat Cookie ~make your own DIGESTIVE cookie~ (4-6pcs)

Yes, we will make our own whole wheat cookies and use them for cheesecake crust too. This cookie taste just like digestive cookie to me. It’s simple, crunchy and delicious!

4. Japanese Rollcake ~non souffle type~

I put there”non souffle type” just in case you wonder whether the recipe is same as Rollcake au Frits (Japanese rollcake) I teach in other class. No it’s not!

This is a new recipe and I learnt this before from one of my favorite yakigashi pastry shop in Japan called Maison Romi Unie.The cream is special and not only fresh cream!

5. Nutty Brownies (4pcs)

This moist nutty brownie is also easy to make. Not only adults but also kids will for sure love this cake!

We will also prepare tuna sandwich, and have them all together at the end of the class with 2 types of English tea!

Here are the dates for this class;

DATE: April 20th (Sat.) 11:00am-3:30pm —> FULL

May 12th (Sun.) 11:00am-3:30pm —> FULL

May 23rd (Thurs.) 11:00am-3:30pm —> Added!

FEE: RM220 (RM169 for members)

To register for this class, please email me at caramelmoko@gmail.com (Tomoko). Thank you and looking forward to seeing you in the class!

I have big collection of teas in my shop and at home. Some of them I buy myself, but most of them are gifts from my family and friends. I like to taste the difference of each tea leaves and the brands, and match them together with the sweets of the day^^!

So I was selecting the teas for the Afternoon Tea Lesson and found this perfect one! It’s a Ceylon Silver Tips White Tea by the brand Dilmah. I remember my mother bought me back this tea leaves from Sri Lanka. I introduce many Sri Lanka tea leaves during my classes, but this one is ‘Silver Tips‘ (limited tea leaves that shine like silver color).

Another tea I want to introduce you is Afternoon tea from Fortnum & Mason. Fortnum & Mason is one of the most popular tea brands in the world, so if you like teas you must know their name! There are hundreds of choice, and this one is a lighter tea with blend —.

Usually when you are having afternoon tea, you want to mix up lighter tea and stronger tea together. And for stronger tea you can later pour in milk and enjoy milk tea. That’s why I made this two choice! I haven’t opened neither of them, so I myself am really looking forward to see how the tea leaves are… I will be doing opening ceremony on the 28th April class, haha, so if you’re interested to join that moment, please let me know!